Tuesday, February 18, 2014

A Recycled Cycling Gift from Ohio to Florida


The Century Cycles store in Rocky River had an unusual visitor last month. An alligator! Made out of old mountain bike tires!

The brainchild of Dan Ward, Rocky River's Bike-Builder Extraordinaire, the 4-foot reptile was created as a house-warming gift for a mountain-biking friend. Warm being the operative word. For a house in Florida. Thus the alligator.

Last February, Dan's friend, Ray Petro, founder and owner of Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park, invited him down for a glorious ten days of Florida mountain biking. Mountain biking in Florida? You're damn right. But that's another story.

The house was so sparsely decorated that Dan decided to spice it up. The gift was shipped last week and Ray will open it this week when Dan goes down again for another mountain biking trip.

The base is a chain-sawed-into-shape block of wood, skinned with old tires and tubes, and detailed-out with presta valve caps, cable housing and ferrules, and marble eyeballs. It took 40 hours.

Aside from liking to create artistic things, Dan's humble mission is, one at a time, to put one less old tire in the landfill. More evidence of this mission can be found around the shop, where Dan has used old tires and tubes as wall corner guards, cork board borders, stool covers, and even a mountain bike tire Christmas tree.

Come on in and see for yourself, and ask Dan about mountain biking in Florida. Or anywhere in Ohio, too, for that matter.

1 comment:

  1. I'm thinking with stuff like this and all the cool spare-bike-part creations of the CC mechanics over the years, we need to organize a Century Cycles Bike Art Show!

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